Evel Knievel being sued for $100m

Daredevil Evel Knievel is being sued for $100 million even after his death.

The claim comes 30 years after the motorcycle stuntman broke the arm of a PR man after attacking him with a baseball bat.

At the time, the pair settled on $13 million damages - but Knievel never paid up.

Now, Shelly Saltman wants what he's owed, and says the uncollected sum has swelled to $100 million with interest over the years.

It could prove the costliest bone Knievel ever broke. But it is unclear whether the showman's estate has that kind of money. He died on Friday at his Florida home, at the age of 69.

"We are going hot and heavy after his estate," Saltman said. "What he tried to do to me and how it hurt my family, I'm owed that.''

The baseball bat attack happened after Knievel - who broke 40 of his own bones during his career - flew into a rage over a book Saltman had written about him. The incident made headlines worldwide when the death-defying biker approached Saltman in a parking lot on September 21, 1977, and suddenly started swinging a bat.

Saltman, then a studio executive, raised his arm to protect his head, a move he says doctors told him probably saved his life. But his arm was shattered in the blow and is held together to this day with a steel plate and screws. Knievel was later jailed for six months.

Saltman had compiled the book Evel Knievel On Tour from tape-recorded interviews with Knievel and others, and maintains it was an accurate and affectionate, if unvarnished, account of Knievel's life.

"I wrote a book about a man who at the time I greatly admired," he said.

He and Knievel never spoke after the attack, Saltman said, though he said the showman approached him over the years through third parties, expressing remorse and offering to settle the judgment. Saltman said that the offers were a ''pittance'' and that he turned all of them down.

"My first thought was that I do hope the poor man is finally at peace," he said upon learning of Knievel's death.